Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Way back in July of 2009, I discovered and then immediately tracked down and watched a movie called Mahakaal: The Monster, a 1993 Bollywood knockoff of the Nightmare On Elm Street series that features a mullet haired Freddy Krueger, slashing Indian teens in their nightmares. Of course, as soon as I watched the movie for myself, I blogged about it, because I'd be a total shit horror blogger if I didn't. I mean come on. Freddy with a mullet. That's the kinda thing that is just begging to be spread around. Like Nutella. Or that thing on Lindsay Lohan's lip. Not that lip. The other lip.

Cut to a few years later. Last week in fact. I get a Facebook message from my good friend Kristy Jett, who blows my mind with a discovery she has just made.

The message went a little something like this...

...actually, it went exactly like this, for I am about to copy and paste it, word for word. Well, I did fix one little error she made, but nobody has to know that...

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE! I just found out there is another Indian Freddy
movie! I only knew of Mahakaal, which I own, but now there is this!
Khooni Murdaa!!

Mind. Blown.

I couldn't believe what I was reading. Could it be true? Could there really be not one, but TWO, Elm Street Bollywood bootlegs? And why had I never heard a peep about this Khooni Murdaa?!

Two painfully awesome hours later, I can indeed confirm that Khooni Murdaa (AKA Deadly Corpse) is in fact yet another Bollywood Elm Street bootleg, this time about a killer who is burnt to death by a group of friends, after he starts stalking and threatening one of their own. Soon thereafter, the burnt up killer returns, and begins stalking, slashing and tormenting the group ... in their nightmares.

While it doesn't appear to be on DVD, I'm happy to report that Khooni Murdaa can be watched for free, and in full, over on YouTube. I'm gonna go ahead and embed the video below, if you should find yourself with two hours to kill (I suppose there are worse ways to fritter your night away...I suppose...). If you'd rather just skip ahead to the good stuff, then scroll down past the video and continue reading this post, for I will outline several choice highlights, with time stamps for easy referencing. Because it's my job to sit through shit like this. Not yours!

For about the first hour, Khooni Murdaa is incredibly boring, and the fact that the video is in Hindi, with no subtitles, doesn't help the cause. It's mostly just characters talking, performing weird song and dance numbers, and then talking some more. Guy stalks girl, girl's friends kill guy, yadda yadda, fast forward, fast forward. Since there are no rip-offs of Elm Street moments in that first hour, we'll just pretend it doesn't exist, and cut right to the point where burnt up Indian Freddy starts slashing teens. Any objections? Very well then!

At about 55 minutes in, Khooni Murdaa becomes a full on Elm Street knockoff, aping mostly from the first and third installments, but also a little bit from Dream Master too. Makes sense, considering those first four films came out before this was made, in 1989. Yes, that's right. Khooni Murdaa predates Mahakaal, by a few years!

Unlike Mahakaal, the Freddy character in this one doesn't look anything like the Freddy we all know and love. He's just a charred up mess of a man that occasionally sprouts blades from his fingers. Oh and he laughs a bunch. I don't know what his name is, so we'll just refer to him as Curry Krueger, from this point on. Any objections? Very well then!

At around that 55 minute mark, we see Curry Krueger make his first kill. He shoots lasers out of his mouth at a young sleeping girl, who has just engaged in a round of intercourse with her boyfriend, and then he levitates her and drags her body all over the ceiling and walls, before dropping her to the ground. Obviously, this is a direct rip from the first kill in the original Elm Street, when Freddy does the same thing to Tina. Real Freddy of course never shot laser beams out of his mouth. But it would've been cooler if he did. #wooderson

Shortly after that, Indian Tina's boyfriend is detained for her murder, and then invisible Curry Krueger uses the boyfriend's prison bedsheets to hang him in his cell, the same thing that happens to Rod in Elm Street. Who the hell names their kid Rod, anyway?

An hour and eight minutes in, Khooni Murdaa apes Dream Warriors for the first of many times, when a young woman seduces a man, and then turns out to actually be under the spell of Curry Krueger. A make out session turns into a fusion of tongues and the girl then spits out several tongue restraints, which strap the dude to the bed. Unlike Joey Crusel, the man doesn't escape, and the bed, and him, are sent hurling off a balcony. No sequel for you, Indian Joey.

A couple minutes after that, a girl is watching TV, which begins to scramble. I think you can tell where this is headed. As she approaches the TV, Curry Krueger's head and arms pop out of it, and he lifts her in the air, and then slams her head through the screen, replicating the iconic kill from Dream Warriors ... Indian style. Lest you think I just took a shitty screen grab of this one, that's really all you see of this kill, which I'd imagine is due to the fact that the budget was too low to make the robot arms effect look halfway decent. In fact, I'd imagine one would have no idea what was even going on in this scene, if they hadn't seen Dream Warriors prior.

1 hour and 23 minutes in, we see Curry Krueger's finger blades for the very first time, which he uses to torment Indian Nancy in the bathtub. That's hot. Even in India.

An hour and 40 minutes in, a young man who's not nearly as handsome as Johnny Depp (personal preference) gets sucked into his own bed. The blood in this scene is about 1/10th of what Wes Craven delivered, as a little bit just kinda spurts out, for a quick moment, before the bed heals itself and returns to its normal shape. I don't know much about Bollywood films, but I'm thinking they're not as gore happy as the ones made here in the states. Or maybe Johnny Depp just has more blood in his body than the average Indian Joe. Who knows.

Continuing the trend of ripping off kills from Dream Warriors, one of the remaining survivors towards the end of the film is puppeted by Curry Krueger, who uses his tendons as strings, and then plunges him off the balcony, to his death. Gotta say, they actually pulled off this scene pretty well, even if it kinda comes out of nowhere. And again, you'd likely have no idea what the fuck is even happening if you hadn't seen Dream Warriors.

The last 15 minutes of Khooni Murdaa are pretty much identical to the last moments of Dream Warriors, right down to a wall bursting scene that would make Roland Kincaid proud. I heart you, Indian Ken Sagoes. But not as much as I heart the real Ken Sagoes.

For the finale, a bunch of Indian Dream Warriors gather together, and begin to get sucked one by one through walls and mirrors. Indian Nancy comes face to face with the ghost of a deceased loved one, who actually turns out to be Freddy (gee...where have I seen that before?). He kills her, though no one seems to care all that much.

Curry Krueger is then dispatched very much the same way Freddy was 'killed' in Dream Master, with holes of light burst through his body, before being completely destroyed. Only in this movie, it's not looking into a mirror and seeing himself for what he truly is that destroys Freddy. What instead happens is some weirdo bearded shaman ninja dude shows up, and casts some kind of spell on him, which blows holes through his body. Since they couldn't afford to do the whole souls escaping from the chest thing, Curry Krueger just bursts into flames, and all is once again well on Indian Elm Street.

Again, if you want to see all of this stuff for yourself, I'd encourage you to fast forward to the 55 minute mark, and go from there. Anything prior to that is just plain painful, and there's nothing to see for that first 54 minutes anyway. So spare yourself, and get right to the killing. Hell, that same advice applies for most of the horror movies out there, does it not?!

4 comments:

This looks amazingly bad but a must see for an Elm Street fan like myself. But the charm of Mahakaal is that Johnny Lever was in it and his absence from Khooni Murdaa brings the excitement down a bit in my eyes.

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